THE MUNGOOSE 



the majority of these are beneficial to man, for they 

 are the carnivorous beetles which prey upon a 

 variety of insect pests. The staple food of rats 

 and mice is various kinds of vegetable substances. 

 Standing crops are ravaged, and when the grain is 

 stored away they voraciously attack and devour it. 

 Young, tender plants are eaten off, the bark of fruit 

 trees gnawed, and the buds, flowers, and fruit eaten. 

 Chickens, the young of domestic pigeons, and even 

 baby ostriches are attacked and killed ; and barns 

 and dwelling-houses are overrun with these de- 

 structive rodents ; and infectious diseases are 

 spread by them. Bubonic plague, we know, is 

 spread by a flea which lives upon the rat, and which 

 obtains the bacteria which cause the disease from 

 the blood of its host. Enteric fever is another 

 deadly disease which is spread about the community 

 by rats which devour the infected material and get 

 their bodies smothered with the microbes of the 

 disease. 



Some species of rats and mice do not haunt the 

 homesteads of man ; they live in the bush-veld, 

 karoo and grass-veld, but even there they do much 

 mischief in eating up useful vegetation and de- 

 vouring vast quantities of seeds which would have 

 otherwise grown into plants to nourish the flocks 

 and herds of the farmer, in addition to the eggs 

 and young of birds and useful carnivorous beetles. 



Then, again, we in South Africa are subject to 

 periodic plagues of migratory locusts which invade 



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